Major General J.F.C. Fuller the Problem of Military Movement and

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, lhe Beautijid and Damned, can be found a character called Captain Dunning, a very reliable and sound officer who prided himself that, within half an hour of meeting a man, he could slot him into a certain category. Among those categories which excited his disapproval were "smart fellow," "thmriser," "poet," and "worthless," the latter presumably being an amalgam of all the previous three categories. I think you will immediately realize that J. F. C. Fuller, whom Sir Basil Liddell Hart in his monumental history, lhe Tank, dubbed, "The first who ever made the heads of continental armies look to England for professional guidance," fits into all these categories except the last. That far from being "worthless," it is increasingly being realized that the corpus of Fuller's writing, 46 books in all (the last appearing in Fuller's 87th year, 1965), disparate, eclectic, and poorly integrated though it frequently is, offers us a sustained and penetrating analysis of the conduct of war, not only of the highest intellectual quality, but something rarer - of considerable percipience. This is not to suggest that Fuller was always right; quite the contrary, he was sometimes wrong. But he was never less than interesting, even when he was wrong, and that is a very great virtue in a military writer, all too rare today. In considering the issues which confront the British Army (and others) in the 1980s and 1990s, of which I am privileged to have a small part as the Resident Historian at the Staff College, I am struck by how comparable the operational problems are today to those that Fuller was discussing in his brilliant and iconoclastic way more than 60 years ago. A character in an E. M. Forster novel somewhere said that if people disagreed with the established order and the prevailing way of doing things, they could at least have the good manners to keep their dissent to themselves. Fuller thrust his ideas about armored warfare to the very forefront of military debate. He did not have the good manners to keep his views to himself, and advanced them in such a fearless (and it must be said also, tactless) manner, as to cost him the chance to go to the very top of the Army. He was dedicated to the cause of truth, as he understood it. In March 1923, he wrote to his friend, Liddell 1 1 kuuicu m c ur nul I uu not much care, because truth in the end wins through. I would rather possess one real sovereign than 1,OOO counterfeit ones.n2 It is a very remarkable - and rare man - who places a commitment to truth above his own advancement, in the army or anywhere else. My subject is a very broad one, in my book J. F. C. Fuller: Military lhinker and elsewhere, I have discussed in some detail the precise nature of Fuller's predictions about the future of armored warfare. In this essay I would like to chart a slightly different course. I wish to pursue the theme of Fuller's ideas about military. movement, or mobility, and how these developed into a refined theory of maneuver warfare. This will permit a discussion of Fuller's more controversial ideas about the military structure and methods of command needed by modem armies when employing this style of warfare. Maneuver warfare is a subject that exercises the thoughts of the American and British Armies at the moment, and I hope that this discussion will be of some interest to those - 26 ARMOR - who are currently grappling with this problem. I should add that if Fuller's work has an undertow, an unspoken assumption, it is that the British Army (and the American Army also) is not very good at maneuver warfare. Not that the British Army lacks the moral qualities necessary for maneuver warfare; such a charge would be, was, and is ridiculous. The British Army throughout its long history has displayed abundant evidence of dash, courage, drive, and an instinctive "feel" for the pulse of battle. If anything, as the Duke of Wellington frequently complained - and Auchinleck might have, had he shared the Duke's choleric disposition - the British Army has shown too much dash. But a close scrutiny at the recent historical record will show, I contend, that the British Army has not been very good at organizing movement on the battlefield, rather a different thing than simply showing a flair for it. Fuller considered that the British Army was too prone to thinking in compartments, and failed to integrate defensive elements into an offensive plan. And the American Army, although highly praised in his books on General Grant for its skill at maneuver, was too prone in the Second World War to rely on overwhelming the enemy with materiel, a style of warfare which he dismissed as "ironmongery. " In Fuller's view, the aim of armed forces was to impose their will on the enemy. But an army fought in accordance with three defined tactical functions: To move, to hit, and to guard. These were supplemented by three others derived from the prime three, to find, to hold, and to pursue (or destroy). An army*s ability to move underlays these functions. The weapons deployed fulfilled the object of the functions. For all officers of Fuller's generation, the First World War (1914-18) was the supreme operational object lesson, a diagnosis of which cemented the foundations of his vision of the future of war. The Great War represented the culmination of a number of developments, generated by the French and Industrial Revolutions, and had resulted, in Fuller's view, in a total dislocation of the system of warfare that had held sway since the end of the Middle Ages. We must, therefore, understand that Fuller's technical operational analyses were inspired by a grand historical vision, which sought to relate military developments in the narrowest sense to the progress - in the technological, political, social, cultural and ideological spheres - of Western civilization as a whole. This is a very ambitious aim, and was, for obvious reasons, imperfectly attained, but was most nearly realized in his three-volume study, % Decisive Battles of the Western World (I954-6), the greatest book ever written by an Englishman on the history of war. The system developed during the 16th century saw the tactical functions of an army attained by weapons combining projectiles (bullets and cannon balls) with shock (those that need to be driven home by the propelled force of their holders (swords, pikes, lances, and later, the bayonet). The distance between the two armies that had to be traversed before an advance with shock ARMOR - JUly-AUgUSt 7997 27 weapons could be driven home, and the capacity of a defending army to destroy a charge of shock weapons with projectile weapons, therefore became a crucial factor. Before the Industrial Revolution, this form of warfare was refined by Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Light forces found the enemy; heavy infantry held him by pinning him to his position; and cavalry, by charging the flank, destroyed his cohesion and attacked the decisive point - the enemy's rear. The important mobile element was supplied by cavalry, and it was this ann that delivered the coup de grace. But even by Napoleon's day, the artillery was gaining in importance. Napoleon's comment, "It is with artillery that war is made," was frequently quoted by Fuller. Once the quantity of projectiles thrown at an enemy became so great that he could not close with shock weapons and his mobile element could not charge, then fighting decisive battles became all but impossible. The productive capacity generated by the Industrial Revolution was so immense that armies were forced to entrench to escape the vast quantity of projectiles fired at them. This rendered armies immobile. A tendency toward attrition was accentuated by important political and social developments. The French Revolution had witnessed the introduction of conscription on a large scale. By 1914, all the major powers, with the exception of Great Britain and the United States, deployed conscript ar-power, which could answer the call to the colors in moments of crisis. The growth of the military power and productive capacity of the nation state by 1914, and the strategic flexibility, which accmed from the construction of railways, contributed to a massive increase in the size of armies. "As democracy, in the form mies with great of man-of one man one vote, was the final expression of the French Revolution," wrote Fuller, "so was that of the nation in arms, one man, one musket, the mili tay expression of this same upheaval. The fundamental problem, however, as Fuller was quick to point out, was that the many millions of soldiers fielded by 1914 did not handle muskets, but repeating rifles, with refinements on the percussion cap, the conoidal bullet, and smokeless powders; they were supported by machine guns ("the concentrated essence of infantry" in Fuller's view) and quick-firing artillery. This avalanche of projectiles, apparent since the American Civil War (1861- 65), the result of more men firing more bullets and shells more efficiently, but commanded less efficiently, as great armies were so much more difficult to command, so much more inflexible than small armies, dislocated the decisive battle, reduced mobility, and led to a huge stalemate. What was the reaction of European military staffs to this major development, which had more than a little bearing on their ability to carry out the intricate and grandiose war plans on which they had all been laboring for many years? In his book, n e Sources of Military Doctrine (1984), Barry R. Posen argues persuasively that new technology is adapted to fit the demands of existing doctrine, rather than vice versa, and that doctrinal innovation to fully exploit new technology is very rare, unless it c8n be carried out in wartime.4 The response of European armies was to emphasize morale factors to the detriment of technological, to argue that sheer courage, national pride, and determination would be sufficient to outweigh massive improvements in firepower. The 'infantry regulations of 1899, fundamentally unchanged until 1914, declared: When the decision to assault originates from the commanders in the rear, notice thereof is given by sounding the signal "f;r bayonets ".... As soon as the leading line is to form for the assault, all the trumpeters sound the signal "forward double time," all the drummers beat their drums, and all parts of the force throw themselves with the greatest determination upon the enemy..... m e n immediately in front of the enemy, the men should charge with bayonet and with a cheer, penetrate the position. 3 Many other more extreme examples of this "cult of the offensive" appeared in French military writings of this period. This kind of argument earned Fuller's contempt for two main reasons; first, it exalted morale factors beyond reason and thus made excessive demands on morale; and second, it utterly distorted the relationship between the offensive and the defensive, which had already been strained by technological improvement. It was not Fuller's contention that morale factors in war were unimportant, quite the contrary. But in any "Guts versus Guns" equation, it was obvious who would win, because courage offers little protection against machine gun bullets. Such factors - the morale and the technological - had to be placed in their proper relationship with one another and not isolated and exaggerated. The Great War, with its long entrenched lines, massive bloody battles, and resultant chaos and revolution was a massive distortion of the Napoleonic military system and, thus, had to be modified. What then was Fuller's solution? It was perfectly simple, as are most profound truths, and consistently stated throughout his long and productive life: that the utility of the decisive battle could be restored if technological change could be har- 28 ARMOR - monized with tactical doctrine to secure the fruits of increased mobility and an increased velocity of war. The faster armies move, the more they can achieve, and the more the enemy can be demoralized so that he is unable to mount a response commensurate with the blow delivered. There is, therefore, a relationship between gaining surprise and winning a rapid and decisive victory, comparable with those of Napoleon, and the novelty of the weapons fielded; technological surprise was thus of crucial importance. It is, of course, in this context that armored forces would have a profound influence on the conduct of war. Because they are protected by armor plate and could advance in the face of a barrage of projectiles, they could cross the "fire zone" between entrenched lines and attack the enemy's rear, as had horsed cavalry in the days of Napoleon. The tank would bring about a massive increase in the velocity of war on land. It was not the only weapon that would contribute to this change, there were two others, aircraft and chemical weapons, with which the tank would operate in the closest harmony. Of course, Fuller was wrong in predicting that chemical weapons would be used "without doubt" in the next war, that of 1939-45, because for various reasons they were not, but a reminder is not required as to what a terrible threat they remain.6 Fuller regarded the tank, like other technological developments, as the product of the prevailing social and technological trends of its parent society. It represented the next phase of the Industrial Revolution based on the internal combustion engine. The more mechanized a society became, the more highly mechanized became its armies. The arms race would, therefore, become more accentuated in warfare on land. Thus, if the weapons on one side became so sophisticated and mechanized, while the other side failed to mechanize, then it was possible that the enemy could be surrounded and annihilated without the armored force having to close the gap between the armies and cross the fire zone. Indeed, the possibility existed to totally defeat an enemy without sustaining a single casualty. The three tactical functions to move, to hit, and to guard could be realized to the fullest. The tank, and its attendant vehicles (Fuller tended to be rather vague about the precise definition of what constituted "a tank") represented in Fuller's view nothing less than a revolution in warfare because it combined in itself the capacity to fulfil those tactical functions - movement, protection (to guard) and offensive power (to hit). The tank could move across country, and could carry with it (so Fuller held) its logistical requirements. It would reinforce a tendency in warfare on land to evolve along the same course as navies. That is to say, the fighting power would be increasingly concentrated in capital-intensive weapons platforms. This tendency has still to work itself out, in my opinion, but I think the introduction of armored personnel camers and fighting vehicles such as the U. S. "Bradley" and the British "Wamor" are a definite further step in this evolutionary direction - of having armored troops (the tactical equivalent of the old cavalry) and mounted infantry. But whichever analogy is used, the contest between projectile and armor, as in naval warfare, is of fundamental importance. How would these weapons actually fight? The combination of offensive and protective power, and the capacity to move, lay at the heart of the tank's fighting strength. Fuller made these elements the basis of his tactical and operational system of maneuver warfare. It must also be emphasized that "mobility" should not be confused with "maneuver." A capacity to move does not in itself lend an army the capacity to fight a maneuver battle. This is a blend of the offensive, protective, and the mobile.' Fuller was of the obinion that the defensive was just as important an element in the maneuver battle as the offensive. In a book of essays called On Future Wafare (1928), Fuller wrote: lRat the decisive point of attack is the rear of the enemy's amy and that to hit this rear we want two forces just a the boxer wants twofists; that all attacks should, when possible, be dual in nature, since it is more dipcult to watch two fists than one fist, because whilrt the right one is being watched the lefl may suddenly hit out. To slightly vary the metaphor, these two fists can be compared to the sword and shield, the offensive and the defensive, with successful generalship a compound of audacity and caution. Armored warfare, if it is to be successfully waged, must be based on a judicious defensive-offensive. To conceive of military operations in terms of "the attack," "defense," and so on was fatal. They had to be seen as part of a conceptual whole. Generally speaking, a commander must attack because without attacking he can neither hit nor hold, and seldom can he maneuver; but in any one of these cases he need not necessarily attack au fond [as in 19141. To await an enemy [however] without attacking is frequently futile, and to attempt to maneuver without first doing so is often to risk annihilation. Such is Fuller's view of the relationship between the offensive, ARMOR - JUly-AUgUSt 7997 29 defensive, and maneuver - the organization of movement on the battlefield. In his conception, these elements are not only inter-related but complementary. It was, and is, a mistake to believe that the defensive was primarily concerned with holding ground or resisting attacks, "for it is just as much part and parcel of every forward movement as every holdihg or retrograde one."' Well, this is all very well in theory, but how can this be achieved in practice? Fuller was a very practical as well as thoughtful soldier. He had wide experience as a planner, and had been the original inspiration behind the first real tank battle at Cambrai in November 1917. He was so confident in the value of his experience, that he was sufficiently audacious to take the Field Service Regulations, and publish his own commentary on it called Lectures on Field Servi'm Regulations ZZ, a book written in just 14 days. some general officers in those days thought this somewhat impertinent. But this book is a masterly operational commentary, which thoroughly repays careful study, and it does not deserve to be overshadowed by. the more famous Lectures on FSR ZIZ, which deals more specifically with operations between mechanized forces. In Fuller's opinion, the transport revolution of the 19th century, especially the development of the railways, had encouraged the movement of increasing numbers of men to the battlefield, but it had done nothing to allow them to fight battles on the move. The old problem of how to close with the enemy, but this time in the face of an immensely increasing barrage of projectiles, still had to be solved. "In all the great artillery battles of 1916-17," Fuller wrote, "the railways enabled a million men to be assembled and fed, but once!he battle area was entered, the roads having been destroyed by the artillery bombardments, rendered this feeding so difficult, that even had the enemy packed up and retired a hundred miles, no sustained advance could have taken place until the railheads had been pushed forward and the roads repaired." The tank made movement across rough country, and thus harmonizing movement with strategy and tactics, a realistic possibility. Previous advances in motorization had done little to speed up the process of fighting, because soldiers had to dismount to fight; the race to win the battlefield was governed more by speed of mobilization than by a physical capacity to reach it overland, because this was determined by muscle power, which remained a constant among all armies. By permitting an army not only to advance but fight simultaneously, so that fighting battles and strategic maneuvers were to an unprecedented degree fused into one interdivisible activity, the tank drastically changed the relationship between mobility and military operations. 10 This was possible because the tank allowed the development of protected movement, which armies had lacked during the Great War. The tank offered the renewed possibility of striking at flanks and thus at the rear of the enemy's army. The opportunity presented itself to paralyze the enemy psychologically, because it is the disintegration of his organization, and especially his command, which is the object of the maneuver battle, and not just the killing of his soldiers. As Fuller wrote, "you may surprise an enemy with his eyes shut or open. In the first case you do something he does not expect, in the second something he is unable to meet." [That is, the fielding of new weapons.] The main object of attaining surprise is gaining time, and time is secured by mobility, and in part the stability of the offensive plan is sustained by air superiority. It cannot be emphasized too strongly how important military time is in this equation. Time was of the essence: "its loss," Fuller wrote, "can seldom be made good; in fact of all losses it is the most difficult to compensate." The faster an army moved, the more it can achieve in a shorter period of time. If an army, he continued, can move twice as fast as its adversary, and is so strongly protected that it loses but one man to his two, then it will have twice as much time at its disposal, and, in comparison to its enemy's strength, its own will be double the muster role. Secure but rapid movement was, therefore, the aim of the maneuver battle, for it weakened the enemy's capacity to resist in direct proportion to the momentum of the advance, as exemplified during the breakthrough at Sedan in May 1940:" Once the enemy's forces were routed, the pursuit, the act of annihilation, comparable with the battles of Frederick the Great and Napoleon, should begin. Fuller envisaged this as anew battle, which should aim at heading off the enemy's retreat by parallel movement. But rapid movement did not mean that the protective element should be downplayed, as it had been before 1914; "today" he wrote, "there are so many bullets flying about on the battlefield, that caution has become a high virtue, as high as courage itself. Few things are so expensive as a shattered attack." Nevertheless, caution must be linked with audacity in a commanding general's plan. 12 30

It cannot be emphasized too strongly how important military time is in this equation. nme was of the essence: "its IOSS, Fuller wrote, "can seldom be made good: in fact of all losses it is the most dificult to compensate." The faster an army moved, the more it can achieve in a shorter period of time. I would like to conclude this necessarily brief survey of Fuller's views on mobile warfare with a number of his reflections on how thinking and implementing this style of warfare can be facilitated. First, he argued that the entire operation should be conceived as an intellectual whole, and not viewed as a string of miscellaneous general engagements that have no relationship with one another. Each battle should be regarded as a stepping stone to the successful conclusion of the war and should make a distinct contribution to the overall plan. Second, that command should be flexible. Commanders, in other words, should command. In a shrewd passage, he commented that: Ihe common deficits in command are lack of balance, sudden elation or depression, fear of what the enemy is going to do in place of concentrating upon what you are going to do to him; setting rash which are outside the ability of the troops to accomplish; over caution and waste of time; calling conferences in order to pick the brains of subordinates and lack of originality which often leads to doing something which the enemy expects in place of what he does not look for.' Fuller particularly disliked conferences. They should serve as a means of explaining an idea and issuing responsibilities, but not as a means of picking the brains of subordinates "or kicking an idea about. " Third, plans should be flexible. They should embrace a conceptual agility, so that action may be adapted to the appropriate circumstances. The plan should be simple, and if the order adopted enables you to hold, maneuver and, hit, you will not go far wrong. Hold strength and hit at weakness. To pin the enemy's front down and hit him in rear, or flank, when he least expects it, and with a force superior to the one you are likely to meet, and place the reserves in position with references to these two ideas.14 The plan should enshrine mobility of thought and not elaborate over-preparation, which cramps initiative and tends to lead to tactics "by the book" and to a "routine." The temptation, too often shown in the Western Desert in 1941-42 - especially in the Battle of Gazala - of wanting to protect everything, and consequently of being weak and dispersed everywhere should be avoided. "Do not let us bother about holding ground or conquering ground - let us organize movement; this is the crucial problem." Taken in moderation, this axiom is a sensible view of the nature of the maneuver battle. '' Finally, we must remember that the object of military operations is the destruction of the enemy's weapon power, his capacity to fulfill the tactical functions, which is the prime object of the maneuver battle. His organization must be shattered. This consideration is all the more important if the enemy outnumbers us. To become involved in a killing match with an enemy who outnumbers us, is not only going to doom the weaker side to defeat, but is the antithesis of that stream of thought, as exemplified in the writings of Major General J. F. C. Fuller, which has done so much to develop the idea of the maneuver battle. Footnotes 'B. H. Liddell Hart, The Tanks (London, 1959). 1, p.221. 2Fuller to Liddell Hart, 27 March 1923, Liddell Hart Papers 11302139. 3Quoted in Brian Holden Reid, J. F. C. Fuller: Military Thinker (London, 19871, p. 141. 4Barry, R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Cornell University Press, 19841, pp. 55, 226. 6Tim Travers, The Killing Ground (London, 19871, pp. 43-44, 53-5, 65- 6; John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun (London, 1987 edn), p.54. 'Brian Holden Reid, "Gas Warfare: The Perils of Prediction," David Carlton and Carl Schaerf (eds) Reassessing Arms Control (London, 1985). 'This is an important point emphasized by Russell F. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants (London, 1981). p. 172.

'J. F. C.

Fuller, On Future Warfare (London, 19281, p. 80. 'lbid, p. 85; Reid, J. F. C. Fuller, p. 67.

"J. F. C.

Fuller, Lectures on FSRll (London, 1931 1, pp 160-2. "lbid, p. 66-8. 121bid, p. 82. 131bid, pp. 6, 41, 165. "On Future Warfare. p. 205. 161bid, p. 293. The author is grateful to the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centra for Military Archives for permission to quote from the Liddell Hart Papers. Dr. Brian Holden Reid is Lecturer in War Studies, King's College, London, and Resident Historian at the British Army Staff College, Camberley, responsible for the coordination of the teaching of military history on the Higher Command and Staff Course and the Army Staff Course. From 1984 to 1987, he was Editor of the RUSI Journal. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Dr. Reid is author of J. F. C. Fuller: Military Thinker ( N e w York: St. Martin's Press,

1987) and numerous articles on British and American military history. 31